Microsoft Teams has emerged as one of the most popular collaboration and productivity platforms on the planet—but it’s not just a tool for internal communication. Microsoft and its partners are also helping companies adapt to new customer engagement trends.
Over the years, Microsoft has consistently introduced new features and integrations for Teams, designed to help businesses reach, support, nurture, and convert customers through the platform. Beyond using Microsoft Teams as a tool to reach customers through various channels, from chat to video, companies can now build entire customer engagement strategies within Teams.
Whether they’re combining Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365, taking advantage of in-built features like Copilot and Teams Queues, or leveraging third-party apps, organizations can embrace Microsoft Teams as an all-in-one solution for customer experience.
If you’re looking for a way to unify Microsoft Teams and your customer engagement strategy this year, here are the top trends you should be aware of.
1. New Teams Features Based on Customer Engagement Trends
In the past, Microsoft has relied heavily on its extensive partner network to transform Microsoft Teams into a solution for customer engagement. There are countless vendors offering access to dedicated Microsoft Teams contact centers, as well as end-to-end customer engagement platforms.
However, more recently, Microsoft has begun introducing new proprietary solutions for customer-facing staff members in Teams too. Recently, the company created its AI-driven Dynamics 365 contact center, which integrates directly with Teams for omnichannel customer service.
Plus, the firm has created apps for Teams, like the “Queues” app, perfect for empowering customer service agents. Microsoft is also giving companies access to tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio so they can build their own generative AI assistants for proactive customer outreach, sales strategies, and marketing support.
Going forward, Microsoft will likely introduce even more embedded solutions within Teams, specifically focused on helping companies adhere to customer engagement trends.
2. The Rise of the Informal Contact Center
One of the most significant customer engagement trends we’ve seen lately, linked to Microsoft Teams, is the increasing adoption of “informal contact centers”. Instead of creating a traditional “contact center solution”, companies are rapidly turning to Microsoft Teams, and connected apps, to align every customer-facing member of staff around the same CX strategy.
With Microsoft Teams, companies can create an environment where subject matter experts, sales, marketing, and customer service teams, field engineers, and others can collaborate. These employees can also collaborate within Microsoft Teams and use connected apps for calling, customer service, marketing, and data management in the same place.
This is paving the way for a new approach to the contact center, where every employee plays a part in elevating customer satisfaction, increasing retention rates, and boosting conversions.
3. Copilot and AI in Customer Engagement Trends
AI, particularly generative AI tools, like Microsoft Copilot, is having a significant impact on customer engagement trends. Microsoft already offers Teams customers access to intelligent tools they can use to enhance customer engagement. Microsoft Copilot in Teams for instance, can summarize and recap important calls with customers. This helps teams to access insights, segment their audience, and create more personalized engagement strategies.
Companies can take advantage of Copilot solutions in Microsoft Dynamics, alongside Teams, providing sales, marketing, and customer service teams with access to bots that help improve productivity and efficiency. There’s even the option to use Microsoft Copilot Studio to build dedicated bots that can proactively serve customers, suggest products, or analyze data.
Microsoft partners are taking advantage of the AI revolution, too, creating their own AI-powered solutions to integrate with Teams that can automate sales and marketing tasks. AI will likely play a huge part in how companies enhance, personalize, and optimize customer engagement strategies through Microsoft Teams.
4. Increased Focus on Employee Experience
The connection between employee experience and customer experience has become increasingly obvious in recent years. In fact, Deloitte found companies that prioritize employee engagement see a 20% increase in sales. The more empowered and engaged team members are, the more they can adapt to customer engagement trends, finding creative ways to nurture and support consumers.
With Microsoft Teams, companies can now take advantage of countless tools that help optimize employee experiences. There’s the Microsoft Places app for coordinating workforces, Microsoft Copilot for boosting staff productivity, and Microsoft’s collection of Viva engagement tools.
When companies combine Microsoft Teams with additional customer engagement tools, from contact center systems to CRMs and marketing apps, the employee experience improves even further. Aligning customer engagement tools and Microsoft Teams allows companies to create a single pane of glass environment where teams can access all the support, data, and features they need to excel in customer engagement strategies.
5. Evolving Omnichannel Engagement Strategies
For years now, customer engagement trends have been pushing companies towards more omnichannel campaigns. After all, companies with strong omnichannel strategies have a 23 times higher customer satisfaction rate. On its own, Microsoft Teams already gives companies numerous ways to connect with customers through chat, video, and audio.
However, new opportunities to boost omnichannel engagement are beginning to emerge. For instance, companies can use Microsoft Immersive Spaces to tap into extended reality for product demos, sales pitches, presentations, and even onboarding programs.
Many vendors offering customer engagement platforms for Microsoft Teams also offer solutions for reaching customers through email, SMS, social media, and messaging apps like WhatsApp. This all means companies using Microsoft Teams can elevate their approach to supporting their audience throughout their customer journey on every channel.
6. Growing Demand for Holistic Data Management
Finally, as companies look for new ways to align their UCaaS, CCaaS, and customer engagement apps into a single solution in Microsoft Teams, data governance strategies are evolving. Combining Microsoft Teams with the tools you already use for customer engagement and service is a good way to unify data and reduce potential security risks.
However, companies still need to think carefully about their overall approach to digital communications governance. Ensuring you can capture the right data from all of the correct channels and store it securely in the years ahead will be crucial. This means investing in tools for not just call recording and archiving, but screen recording and monitoring too.
Plus, as businesses continue to embrace AI apps for customer engagement, they’ll need to take extra precautions to ensure that these tools are using data ethically and safely. Fortunately, Microsoft already offers companies ways to control how data is managed with Copilot across all platforms, from Teams to Microsoft Dynamics.
The Future of MS Teams Customer Engagement
Increasingly, companies beginning to recognize the full value of Microsoft Teams, not just for productivity and collaboration, but for customer engagement, service, sales, and marketing strategies too. With the right combination of features within Teams, and access to state-of-the-art integrations, companies can transform Teams into an end-to-end solution for enhancing customer experiences.
If you’re not already using Microsoft Teams to help you adapt to the latest customer engagement trends, now could be the perfect time to update your strategy.
